


Don't Leave Me Cold

by opheliadreaming, Whadyameanhesdead



Category: Shakespeare RPF | Elizabethan & Jacobean Theater RPF, Will (TV 2017)
Genre: But it's not really the end because this is just a rewrite of a chapter of a different fic, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing for all the wrong reasons, Kit Marlowe is in no way Okay, Listen this is just a really mean thing I did, M/M, Mutual Pining, Our faves at their worst, Recreational Drug Use, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 23:03:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17713334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliadreaming/pseuds/opheliadreaming, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whadyameanhesdead/pseuds/Whadyameanhesdead
Summary: Act 5 Scene 2 of "Things He Couldn't Give" rewritten from Kit's perspective.What happens when Kit Marlowe breaks?





	Don't Leave Me Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opheliadreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliadreaming/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Things He Couldn't Give](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17449604) by [opheliadreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliadreaming/pseuds/opheliadreaming). 



> So basically, Opheliadreaming wrote the first two parts of a four-part college AU about Elizabethan England's two greatest playwrights. As her beta, I became RIDICULOUSLY INVESTED in this AU, and as her friend I managed to fill it with my own emotional issues. It's been lit, y'all. But then Act 5 Scene 2 rolled around and DESTROYED ME, so naturally I decided a fun idea would be to rewrite that scene from Kit's perspective.
> 
> This was not a fun idea. You have been warned.
> 
> This scene is essentially Kit trying and failing to escape his grief over Emerson in the worst possible ways. It's really ugly, guys. Read Ophelia's fics "Even if He Wished" and "Things He Couldn't Give" first or this won't make any sense.

            Kit wasn’t really sure how he’d ended up at this party. Emilia wasn’t there, so it couldn’t be that. The likeliest case was that he’d been invited by one of the other theater majors, one of the freshmen whose name he didn’t know, but who certainly knew his and wanted the attention of the infamous _Kit Marlowe_. It certainly _seemed_ like the desperate, sex-crazed theater major sort of party, if the endlessly pulsing bassline and abysmal lighting were anything to go by. It didn’t matter. Nothing like a little tasteless hedonism to take the edge off, and god knew his ragged edges needed it.

            Whatever the case, he’d found himself in the middle of a sea of heaving bodies, all sweat-slick arms and legs, and undifferentiable mass of desire. Desire to fight, to fuck, to drink, to smoke, to feel, to forget. It should have been easy to lose himself in it. He’d never had trouble doing so before—always the daring one, always the sensualist, always the one ready to let loose—and yet all he could manage now was to stumble through the crowd, unidentifiable drink in his hand, searching for something— _anything_ —that might make him feel different. Not better—better was a categorical impossibility—but something other than the raw, hollowed feeling, as if someone had scraped out the inside of his chest.

            _There_.

            Dark hair, green eyes—not blue, thank fuck—and stubble that didn’t look half so rakish as he thought it did. Kit knew him, in the Biblical sense if not the common one. Jeremy? Jacob? Something like that. It didn’t matter. He was tall and decent-looking and always willing. That was plenty.

            He didn’t protest when Kit slid a hand behind his head, just grinned a lopsided grin and bent to meet his lips in a kiss that was too wet, too languid, too possessive. The green-eyed boy kissed like he was owed, like he had all the time in the world, like it only half-mattered to him. Kit hadn’t noticed that before.

            It didn’t matter.

            “What did you do to your hair?” he murmured against the shell of Kit’s ear.

            “I cut it.” Kit’s voice sounded strangely flat over the incessant thrum of the music.

            The boy hummed, his feigned interest in the question already waning. “Want me to make you feel good?” he asked.

            “ _Yes_.”

            He must not have noticed the hitch in Kit’s breath or the way his head bowed for a moment, because Jeremy-Jacob simply went digging in his pocket, a self-satisfied look washing across his face. “Here we go.” He held a plastic baggy up before Kit’s eyes, clear as crystal, half a dozen brightly-colored tablets nestled inside.

            _Oh_. Kit had been expecting _make you feel good_ to mean being pulled upstairs. He’d expected hands and mouths and other parts. He certainly hadn’t expected this.

            It didn’t matter.

            He nodded, letting his head tip back, letting his fingers creep into the dark hair at the back of Jeremy-Jacob’s neck. “Yeah,” he agreed, breath rushing out of him like wind through poplar trees, “Fuck, _yes_.”

            A pleased light came into those green eyes, turning them the color of strangling vines. He raised a hand, popped a pill into his mouth, swallowed. Kit watched the bob of bare throat, somehow rendered obscene by the look on his face. Then the hand came up again, laying another tablet on an exposed tongue. His head bent, their lips met again in the slick mockery of a kiss, and suddenly that tongue was in Kit’s mouth, depositing its illicit burden there.

            Kit swallowed. The pill slipped down so easily he could almost pretend it was nothing. He hadn’t done Molly—he _assumed_ it was Molly—since high school, not since before Emerson got clean the first time. But that was a dangerous thought, the kind of thought that would lead him back down the endless path of _Emerson’s-dead-I’m-alone-I-couldn’t-stop-it-Emerson’s-dead_ …

            _No_. He wouldn’t think that. He shut that thought back up behind the door he’d built, locked it tight. He wouldn’t think that. It didn’t matter.

            Jeremy-Jacob was talking again.

            “…missed you,” Kit tuned back in just in time to hear him say. “Heard you got together with that Shakespeare guy.”

            _Will_. Another thought he refused to have tonight.

            “Shut the fuck up and kiss me,” he hissed instead, shoving himself against the taller boy, pinning him to the wall, grinding up against him less in a search for friction than distraction.

            It did the trick. Jeremy-Jacob’s pupils blew wide, black swallowing green. And then his hands were on Kit’s ass, his tongue was in Kit’s mouth, his hips were matching the movement of Kit’s own. He smelled like cigarettes and he moved rougher than Kit liked and his stubble was an irritant, but it didn’t matter. The feel of warm skin against his own was more than enough for Kit, and he sank into the familiar motions, waiting for the drug to fizz out through his bloodstream.

            The wait felt interminable. Jeremy-Jacob must have gotten bored of frantic, filthy kissing eventually, because before long he was slipping away, leaving Kit to lean against the wall and try not to shudder at the sudden freezing cold. He had just enough time for that terrible lonely feeling to start gnawing at his edges before the green-eyed boy was back, pressing another drink into his hand and lips against his neck. “Miss me, baby?”

            _No. Yes. You’re not the one I’m missing, you arrogant fuck_. _Don’t leave me again_. A dozen contradictory thoughts ran through Kit’s increasingly muddled brain. He didn’t give voice to any of them. He simply murmured, “Come here,” and pulled the other boy back against him, desperate to drive out the cold.

            They started dancing at some point, if it could be called that. Mostly, it was the simple movement of body against body, set to a beat only in the vaguest sense, each of them too wrapped up in their own desires to pay much attention to one another, much less the music. Kit could feel sweat sticking the old band t-shirt he wore to his skin, could feel the bass pounding in all the hollow places in his body, could feel where the other boy was hard and pressed against his thigh. It was far easier to ignore that Kit himself wasn’t hard than it should have been. Far easier than it _would_ have been, had he been able to care about anything beyond keeping dangerous thoughts and shivering cold at bay.

            But then something shifted. Maybe it was the drug kicking in, or maybe it was the emptiness inside growing more insistent, or maybe it simply got too difficult to ignore how little he was actually enjoying this. Whatever it was, some switch flipped in Kit from one moment to the next, and abruptly he couldn’t bear it. The hands sliding beneath his shirt were the wrong hands. The lips on his neck were the wrong lips. The eyes that stared into his when he yanked back were the wrong eyes. He didn’t want it. He couldn’t stand it. His skin was on fire, not with the pleasure of touch, but with the prickling need to get _away_.

            “I have to go,” he muttered, taking a half step back. His feet weren’t as steady as he expected them to be, and the floor seemed to sway beneath him, but that was what happened when stimulants got mixed with alcohol and aching, lonely misery.

            “Wait, baby, don’t go.” One of Jeremy-Jacob’s hands moved itself from Kit’s hip to take hold of his bicep, holding him in place.

            _Baby_. It sounded stupid and saccharine and possessive. This boy didn’t know him—Kit didn’t even remember his fucking _name_ —and yet he had the nerve to call him that?

            “Get the fuck off.” He peeled the green-eyed boy’s hands off him, revulsion rising up at the feel of them. And then he bolted.

            “Marlowe, wait!” Kit heard the cry ring out after him, but he was already ducking through the crowd, flinching away from every brush of skin against his. It was too much. He needed to get out. The lights were pulsing—or maybe they weren’t and he was just that fucked up—and the bass was humming through him and he needed to get _out_.

            “Kit?” It was another familiar voice—one that ordinarily would have had him rolling his eyes, but this time wasn’t quite so unwelcome—and he turned toward it.

            Yet more dark hair greeted his eyes, but this time full of sleek, soft waves. Kit knew that fancy head of hair, knew that obnoxiously smirking mouth—though it wasn’t smirking now. “Burbage?”

            Burbage— _Richard_ his mind supplied in a voice he refused to acknowledge as Will’s—moved closer, sidling past a kissing couple. “Hey, what’s up? You look a little…uh…”

            “Fucked up?” Kit supplied. He was stumbling drunkenly through a party, and he knew how that probably looked. Plus he knew what the new haircut looked like—the one he’d done in his own bathroom with a pair of more than slightly rusty kitchen shears—and it wasn’t a good look, regardless of what Jeremy-Jacob thought.

            “I was gonna say spooked. You good?”

            “Peachy.” Kit could hear the bitter tinge to his own voice. The drug was supposed to make him feel _good_. That’s why they called it Ecstasy, for fuck’s sake, and yet all he felt was shaky and anxious and freezing cold.

            “Seriously, Kit, are you ok?” He laid a hand on Kit’s shoulder, and the feel of it was scalding, even through his shirt. He could still feel Jeremy-Jacob’s hands on him too, sliding over his ribs, his waist, his ass. Burbage must have felt his shudder, because he pulled the hand away quickly, handsome face growing all the more concerned.

            “I’m fine,” Kit said quickly, hoping to forestall any more questions about his wellbeing. “What’s Big Dick Burbage doing here, anyway? On the prowl, are you?”

            Richard’s brows knit together. “Um…I…Marlowe, are you hitting on me?”

            It wasn’t a totally unreasonable conclusion. Burbage was good looking—certainly better than the asshole Kit had been kissing a few minutes ago—and had a reputation among the theater department for being excellent in bed—hence the ridiculous nickname—not to mention he’d already slept with virtually every eligible candidate in the sophomore class, or so the rumors had it. But he was also best friends with a certain blue-eyed poet.

            “God, no.”

            “Good.” Relief washed over Burbage’s face. Apparently, he’d been just as appalled at the thought as Kit. “Look, are you sure you’re…”

            “Oh my _stars_ , Burbage, would you _fuck off_? I’m _fine_ , and even if I weren’t, do you really think you’re the person I would tell?” He turned tail before Richard could say another word, determined not to have to listen to another concerned inquiry.

            Kit was already deep in the crowd by the time he thought to turn and ensure Burbage wasn’t following. He wasn’t. In fact, he stood exactly where Kit had left him, phone pressed to his ear, look of irritation on his face.

            It didn’t matter.

***

            It might have been an hour before Kit finally found his way out into the air of the back yard. Or, it might have been barely a minute. He had no idea, head swimming from the drink and the drugs and the things he was trying so fucking hard not to think about. However long it was, he stumbled through the back door like a man unused to dry land, like a sailor far too long at sea.

            It was cold. It was fucking _freezing_ , though the may air had been balmy when he showed up, but at least he could breathe out here, away from the choking press of fevered bodies.

            “Hey, man.”

            Kit looked up from where he’d been leaning against the back wall of the house, head down, arms wrapped around his middle as if to keep what was left of him from spilling out.

            There were other people out here, of course. Others who needed to escape into the air and the relative quiet for a moment, or who wanted to suck things other than air into their heavy lungs. The one who’d spoken was a red-headed boy he didn’t recognize, but that didn’t mean much. Kit never did have a memory for faces. Or names. Or much of anything, save pain.

            “Marlowe, right?” the boy asked, “Chris Marlowe?”

            Kit felt his mouth twist in distaste at the sound of that. “ _Christopher_ ,” he corrected. No one called him that, save professors and his own parents, but he didn’t want to offer up _Kit_ in that moment. Even the sound of his own name would have felt too much like skin on skin.

            The boy didn’t notice his reluctance, of course. “Right, sorry. You want a smoke?”

            Kit’s head shook of its own accord. Even the smell of their cigarettes was starting to make him sick. Cloying and sweet and sliding over him in an oily fog.

            The boy shrugged and turned back to his friends, leaving Kit again to hold himself in silence and try to quell his shivering.

            “Did you hear some guy died last month?”

            Again, Kit’s head snapped up. It was the same boy who’d offered him the cigarette, chatting idly with his friends as they passed a lighter back and forth.

            “Seriously?”

            “Yeah. They like sent out an email to all the students, but that was it. I heard his parents had it hushed up. Didn’t want anybody finding out.”

            Kit felt himself straightening, though he didn’t feel like the one doing it. He felt himself take a step forward.

            “Why not?”

            “Guy overdosed on heroin or some shit. One of my sister’s friends lives in the same building, too, and she said it was a guy that found him. His boyfriend or something.”

            “Sucks.” There was a hint of sympathy in the other boy’s voice, but the one with the red hair didn’t seem to notice.

            “Yeah, so I guess the dude’s richy rich parents didn’t want everybody knowing their son was some kind of junkie homo.”

            “What the fuck did you just say?” Kit didn’t even realize he’d moved until he was suddenly breathing down the back of the boy’s neck.

            He jumped, spinning fast enough he dropped his cigarette on the concrete slabs of the patio. “Whoa. Jesus, man, what the fuck?”

            “What did you say?” Kit’s voice didn’t sound cold or flat. It sounded dead. It sounded like the sheer top of a glacier, just ice and sky and howling wind.

            “I just…” The redhead shifted foot to foot. “Dude, it’s not a big deal. Were you like eavesdropping or whatever? That’s fuckin weird.”

            “Say it again.”

            “Come on, man,” one of the friends gave a halfhearted protest. Kit was vaguely aware that they’d all stepped back when he spoke.

            “I said, _say it again_.”

            Red Hair leaned back away from him a fraction, expression half nervous, half brash. “What the fuck’s your problem? We’re just talking about some guy who killed himself last month.”

            _Killed himself_. And there it was. The question Kit had refused to ask, the question that he was never going to get an answer to. Did Emerson do it on purpose? Was the phone call meant as a plea for help or a goodbye? _Did he mean to leave me?_

            Kit struck blindly. His fist connected before he could think, and the heat of blood spattered across his knuckles was the first sensation all night that didn’t feel quite so horrible.

            They were on him in a flash, but it didn’t matter. He was ready. Not ready to fight back—Kit was the sucker punch sort, not a real fighter—but certainly ready to take it. What threat did fists hold for him anymore? He’d suffered worse. Things that didn’t hit or kick, things that ripped away at a person until they were left nothing but tatters and useless wanting.

            Kit couldn’t tell if they knew what they were doing or if it was simply easier to lay a body out than he’d thought, but suddenly he was on the ground, spitting blood and laughing like a harpy. It didn’t feel good. Nothing was ever going to feel good again, of that he was quite certain, but this at least felt _something_. Not alive or full or warm, but it felt not-dead, not-empty, not-cold.

            “Is that all you’ve got?”

            He stumbled to his feet, hands raised in a parody of a boxer’s stance. Kit might not be a fighter, but he’d always been an actor, and he knew at least how to make it _look_ good.

            He was still laughing. It didn’t sound right, not even to his own ears, and it felt more like something clawing its way up out of his throat, but it seemed to unnerve them at least. They were ringed around him, all of them with their chests puffed up and scowls painted over their faces. He couldn’t tell one from the other, wasn’t even sure which was the one he’d struck first, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the feeling of flesh striking flesh and the heat of his own blood running down his face.

            There was some kind of commotion on the edge of the crowd. Someone was fighting their way through, probably some other fool looking to dent Kit’s face in. Fine by him.

            But then it wasn’t that. It wasn’t another foe he could stare down, it was something so much worse, something blue-eyed and furious and brightly-burning.

            _Will_.

            He didn’t see the next punch coming, too busy staring in horror at the specter on the edge of the ring. He didn’t see it coming, but it wasn’t as if seeing it would have made a difference. He wouldn’t have moved. He couldn’t have brought himself to _care_ enough to move.

            _Kit_. He saw the name form on Will’s lips, though he didn’t hear it. His knees buckled, and once again he was on the icy concrete. He pushed himself up, breath coming ragged and whistling, just in time to see Will descending like one of the angels he believed in, swooping in on wings of fire just as one of the boys pulled Kit up by his shirt.

            “Get the fuck off!”

            Will grabbed the attacker’s arm before another blow could land, eyes full of wild rage, and Kit was transfixed. He’d only glimpsed this side of Will before, this incandescent fury, and to see it unleashed now…

            But then the arm Will had grabbed lashed back, cracking across one high cheekbone and snapping back that familiar head, and _no,_ _that wasn’t right._ Will wasn’t meant to be hurt. Will was meant to be safe at home, never to know the dark things Kit hid from him.

            Kit wanted to rise. Wanted to throw himself at the asshole who’d laid a hand on Will. Wanted Will to just _go_ , so he didn’t have to live this fresh Hell of watching Will try to save what Kit knew to be unworthy of it.

            Burbage was there—and for the first time, Kit was grateful of it—catching Will before he could fall, saying something Kit didn’t hear, and then it was Richard’s fists flying, and Will’s hands were gathering Kit up like so many broken pieces.

            “We’re leaving.” Kit’s arm was slung across his shoulders, and when had that happened? He felt himself leaning into it, though he ached to pull back.

            “What are you doing here, William?” he asked around a hacking cough that tasted of blood and wretched shame. “Out for a little vice and mayhem?” And wasn’t that an absurd thought, Will with vices?

            “We’re leaving,” Will said again. He sounded angry. That was good, anger was good, Kit could handle anger. It was the gentle, frightened look in those too-knowing eyes that scared him.

            They were in the house again, and Kit couldn’t help the way he flinched away from the gawking crowd, couldn’t help the way each flinch pressed him closer to Will’s side. They kept their distance, though, shades kept back by the edge of Will’s sharpened gaze.

            Then the open air enveloped them again and Kit drew a breath that stung. Will wasn’t slowing down, wasn’t stopping, wasn’t letting him go. He just dragged Kit along like so much dead weight.

            “I’m fine, Will.” It didn’t sound convincing. It didn’t matter.

            Kit tried to yank away, but Will’s arm only held him tighter. “What did you say?” he asked, lethally quiet.

            “I said I’m fine. Let me _go_.” He shoved, he struggled, but either Will’s grip was adamantine, or Kit’s best efforts meant little more than smoke.

            There was something unnamable and untenable in Will’s voice when he spoke. Something that sounded too much like grief. “You’re not fine. You’re—” He stopped, a choking sound ripping out of him.

            Kit couldn’t hear it, couldn’t bear it. “I’m _what_ , Will Shakespeare?”

            He could feel the effort Will put into relaxing his hold, relaxing his panic. “You’re not fine. You’re bleeding and cut up like an extra in a horror movie. You might have a concussion. You’re coming home with me.”

            _You’re coming home with me._ Kit didn’t want that. He might have gone home with the green-eyed boy, or someone else, perhaps, and it could have meant nothing more than hunger. He couldn’t go home with Will, not when it meant concern and care and awful, awful tenderness.

            He made a noise, low in his throat, but Will didn’t seem to hear.

            “Damn it, Kit, what did you _take_? You’re high.”

            Was he? He could feel Will’s touch searing his skin and certainly the world was swaying more than usual, but was he high? Wasn’t high meant to feel like flying instead of falling?

            He couldn’t ask Will that question, of course. That question didn’t matter. The only one that did bubbled to his lips.

            “What do you care?”

            “What do _I_ care?” Will’s face contorted and for the briefest instant, Kit thought he might hit him. But that was stupid. Will would never hurt him, save through his wretched kindness.

            Then they were moving again, and Will wasn’t saying anything, and Kit was left to think of nothing but the the arm wrapped around him and how strange it felt.

            As a rule, Will and Kit didn’t touch. Hands on shoulders, certainly, by way of reassurance or briefest moments of unrepressed affection. There was, too, the occasional grab for wrist or elbow, a demand for attention as quickly made as released. And there had been that blinding, agonizing moment of holding Will’s hand in his, so many months ago. But by and large, whether by unspoken agreement or simple universal law, they kept their distance.

            Kit had broken that rule, of course. Sitting beside Will in a borrowed car, the grime of a jail cell still on his skin, the wolves of his grief still only circling, Kit had bridged the gap. Only for a moment, only long enough to press a frozen kiss to Will’s cheek, but it was enough to leave him with blistered lips and the feeling he had tipped some careful balance between them.

            “I live that way,” he muttered, pointing in the vague direction of his apartment.

            “Shut up, you idiot. You’re staying with me.”

            Kit shut his eyes for a second, feet still moving without his will or attention. “Didn’t think you cared enough to do it a second time.”

            “Do what a second time?”

            “Come and get me.” It was a lie. He knew Will would come get him—come _save_ him—as long as Kit allowed it. Longer, probably. Of course Will cared enough. The fool was practically made of caring. Even when he blundered, it was from an excess of simple, honest care. He cared for Alice but cared for Anne. Hurt them both with it. Hurt himself, too. Kit wished that for once, Will would turn an ounce of that care on himself.

            Will’s steps broke their meter for a moment, then resumed.

            “You cut your hair.”

            It didn’t feel like it had with the boy at the party. Will wasn’t making whatever banal observation he could to feign an interest. Will was probing, questing, trying to work his way under Kit’s shivering skin to whatever truth he thought lay beneath.

            Kit didn’t want Will beneath his skin—not now—so he said nothing, let him wonder.

            Eventually they reached Will’s building, reached the stairs, reached the door, reached the bed. That was where Will dropped him, the restraining arm finally gone.

            “Give me your shirt.”

            The request didn’t make any sense to Kit’s addled mind, so he ignored it, chose instead to lie back and stare at Will’s ceiling. So, this was the view that lulled him to sleep at night. Kit had expected something more fantastical, somehow, than water-stained stucco. Something that might provide an insight into Will’s source of inspiration.

            Will was talking again. “Come on, Kit,” he said, voice firm, “You’re covered in blood and beer.”

            Kit glanced down at himself. So he was. When had that happened?

            Will made an impatient noise, a bundle of blue fabric gripped in his hand.

            “If you want to take my clothes off, I’m not stopping you.” Some distant piece of Kit registered how ridiculous that sounded. _Was that meant to be flirtation, Marlowe?_ Will didn’t want that. Maybe he _had_ a year and a half ago, drunk off his ass at a party. Maybe there had been flashes of desire since, but desiring a thing for a split second wasn’t the same as truly _wanting it_.

            Will huffed out a breath, irritation breaking over his face. “Fine.”

            And then he was touching Kit again, pulling him up, wrestling him out of the filthy shirt. Kit could see the scene in his mind, this farce of love-making as Will pulled him out of his ruined clothes, and he wanted to retch. Will’s fingers were on his ribs, skating over the bruise that bloomed there like a rose, and Kit flinched away, shutting his eyes against the wrongness of it.

            “Your hands are cold.” Another lie. Will _burned_.

            “I’m getting some ice.” He stood up, tossing the fresh shirt he’d been holding at Kit’s bare chest. “Put this on.”

            Kit watched him go, watched the war on that familiar face. Will was tying himself in knots and Kit couldn’t stop him. It was his fault.

            The shirt was on by the time Will came back, and Kit had resumed his study of the ceiling. His head was clearing, finally, but with that came all the things he didn’t want to think of.

            “Hold this on your ribs and stay awake.” Will’s voice was gentler now, his face softer when Kit glanced at it. “Please. Please stay awake.”

            There was little worry there, but Kit wouldn’t tell him so. He’d barely slept in weeks.

            “I’m fine, Will.” And what a lie that was. “You don’t need to do this.” _That_ , at least, was the truth. Will didn’t need to care for him. Kit didn’t need caring for.

            Again, Will slipped away, and this time Kit felt the cold start to creep back in. The shirt was soft against his crawling skin, but worn thin by years of washing. Will’s sheets, too, were soft, and Kit remembered changing them when he’d done his best to tidy this same apartment six months before, for want of anything that might actually _help_.

            Will was back, kneeling by the edge of the bed, a first aid kit in hand. “Can you sit up?”

            Kit obeyed. Will’s hand was on his shoulder, steadying, scalding. His touch was soft, and that softness cut deeper than any blade could reach. It was too much, and Kit was so cold. He let himself slump forward, let his face come to rest in the soft hollow of Will’s throat.

            “Kit, you’re burning up.”

            _Only because you’re burning me_.

            “Don’t worry about me, Will.” He didn’t mind anymore. The touch felt like it ought to sear him down to the bone, but that was alright. Better than cold. Better than the still, flat waters he had poured over the wreck inside.

            Will pulled back to stare into his eyes, and Kit did his best not to wonder what he saw there. Emerson had never let Kit see his likeness, never let him see himself through a lover’s gaze. He certainly didn’t want to see himself through Will’s.

            He just wanted it to be dark and quiet and _warm_.

            Something passed over Will’s face, some dreadful, wrenching thing that left him trembling in its wake.

            But his hands were in Kit’s hair, easing his head back to expose the raw wounds they’d made of him. “Kit, come on, Love. Let me see.”

            Kit’s breath stopped coming.

 _Christopher_ , he’d called himself, afraid the sound of his own name from a stranger’s lips would be too akin to touch. That was nothing, _nothing_ compared to hearing it in that aching, gentle tone from Will. It wasn’t skin against skin. It was Will reaching into his chest and laying hands on the bloody, beating flesh that lived there.

            And yet that too was nothing next to that other word. That monstrous word that sent men to their deaths and meant nothing but endless loss. Will couldn’t call him that. That word on those lips in that moment was sacrilege. _Abomination_.

            Will knew it, too. The look of dread he wore said as much, even as he moved to clean Kit’s split knuckles.

            It was too much. Kit was so _cold_. With fear, with horror, with never-ending grief.

            So, his hands betrayed him. His hands—always closer linked to that wretched thing in his chest than the one in his head—were suddenly sliding over Will’s skin, one cupping his chin and one tangling their fingers together.

            “Kit, what are you—” Will stared, eyes storm-clouded.

            Kit knew what he meant. _What are you doing?_

            Anything. Anything to shut him up. Anything to keep that word out of his mouth. Kit ached to hear it again even as he knew he could never, _never_ hear it again. That word, that awful word that slipped so easily from Will’s lips, threatened to destroy him. Unmake him.

            And so, Kit did the one thing he was certain would kill that word in its cradle, stop it from ever coming again.

            He kissed him.

            Will Shakespeare ought to have tasted of coffee and peppermint and oranges. He ought to have tasted of silver tongue and honeyed words.

            He certainly shouldn’t have tasted of blood.

            The recoil, Kit had expected. He wasn’t surprised when Will yanked back, wasn’t surprised when he went sprawling across his own floor. What he was not expecting was the moment just before that.

            He was not expecting the moment Will kissed back.

            “What the _fuck_ was that, Kit? What the hell?”

            _I don’t know. I thought I knew._ _I don’t know._

            Will was breathing fast and ragged like a cornered animal. Kit could see the fear on him plain as day, could feel it in his own chest, too. And then Will was tucking something away behind his eyes, something he didn’t want Kit to look at. Kit watched him wipe his mouth with a shaking hand like he was trying to be rid of something heinous, something staining. This wasn’t right. Will wasn’t supposed to be frightened. Will was supposed to be angry, repulsed, ready to throw Kit out on his ass. And he unquestionably wasn’t supposed to kiss Kit back.

            “Nevermind, you’re…you’re not yourself, and I’m still with Anne. You know I don’t feel that way about you.”

            _You know I don’t feel that way about you._ And there it was. There was the piece that made no sense, the one that wouldn’t slot into the puzzle.

            Will was lying.

            Will was lying _to Kit_.

            Kit knew tragedy. He knew it like a second skin, had written it, read it, lived it. The Greeks, some scholars said, created the form not because they loved to suffer but because they _needed it_. Needed a pressure valve on society, a way to purge themselves of fear and grief and rage in one neat sitting, so that such things could not erode their shining Athens. _Catharsis_ , they called it.

            But modern life had no such valve, Kit’s life least of all. He kept his fear and grief and rage locked tight, hidden in an airless box like all Pandora’s woes. There was no catharsis after what he’d lived in recent days. And now here was Will, the one person in the world Kit trusted to know him and be known as much as such things could be. And he was lying. Had _been_ lying for so long, pretending not to want, pretending Kit was alone in this.

            Kit’s mouth opened and snakes spilled out. “You can turn me down all you like, Shakespeare, but don’t keep pretending you’re the golden boy.” He couldn’t stop. He didn’t _want_ to stop. “I know what happened with Alice, and I know what you wanted to happen with me. You’ve wanted me since the day we met, and denying it doesn’t make you a saint. It just makes you a liar.”

            Will clenched his teeth, eyes wide.

            _Say it_ , Kit dared him silently. _Tell me something true for_ once.

            “I’m not the one trying to martyr myself.” Ah, there it was. There was the wordsmith, the angry man whose tongue lashed like fire. Kit could face an angry Shakespeare. Anger, at least, was honest. “And you have a final tomorrow, Kit. What the fuck are you doing, getting like this?”

            A final? What sort of question was that? As if Kit could give a fig for tests or papers when Will— _his_ Will, who was not his—had been lying all this time.

            “Whatever the fuck I want!” he spat, rising on legs that swayed, “What are _you_ doing, William?”

            All night, Will had been leaving Kit with blistered skin, but now he understood. Ice could burn as easily as flame. Dante’s Hell was frozen, after all. It _hurt_ , to know Will had left him stranded and alone in his wanting. To know that Will had felt the same and left Kit to wander a landscape of regret. And _why_? He knew Will couldn’t love him, but nor could he love Anne, at least not the way she so clearly wanted. Was this another of his kindnesses? To leave Kit with none of him because he could never have had the whole? As if Kit wasn’t greedy— _desperate_ —for whatever scraps of Will he could lay claim to. Was this mercy, the way Emerson once thought it might be more merciful to leave him instead of stay and make Kit watch him suffer?

            Will was gaping like a fish, backing rapidly away from Kit. “What—what am I…What are you—”

            Kit was _through_ with other people’s mercies. He hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted it, and yet still it had laid him open stem to stern. _Enough_.  “You’re so fucking scared of losing something you don’t even want that you won’t grab the things you do. Do you think _Anne_ doesn’t know she’s your god damn _safety net_? The pretty girl from the small town you can fall back on if the big city gets to be too much for you? You’re a fucking _coward_ , William Shakespeare! You’re lying to everyone about who you are!”

            “You don’t get to tell me how or when to come out to people, Kit!” And did it come back to that? To Will’s terror of showing people the truth of him, for fear of scorn or hate? But no. Will wasn’t afraid to show that piece to Kit. Kit had treasured that measure of honesty for so long, held it close as proof that Will _trusted_ him.

            He laughed, high and sobbing laughter that rent the air. “That’s not even what this is about. You act like you’re so fucking confident, but you’re living this ridiculous double life. The girl, the lies, the god damn promise ring!” There it was, that band of silver, though Will did his best to hide it behind his thigh. “That isn’t you! Fuck, you’re still majoring in something you hate to please your dad. He’s dead, Will. He’s never going to approve of you!”

            That was too far. Kit knew as soon as the words were out, and yet he could not find a shred of regret in the empty birdcage of his chest.

            The words took the legs from under Will, quite literally. He slumped into one of the hard, straight-backed chairs, eyes wide and pleading. It was the same chair where Kit had spotted the suit when Will was packing for his father’s funeral. “No.” Will’s voice was pleading, but the box was open. There was no going back. “I’m not doing this. We can talk about this when you’re sober.”

            Will stood to walk away again, but Kit grabbed him, spun him despite the scalding cold of the touch. “Sure, run away and hide, hide away all those ugly little feelings you can’t stand to let anyone see. Wouldn’t want anyone to see William Shakespeare in anything but the light from his golden halo.” Their eyes locked, blue boring into blue. Lapis and ice and violets, all the things the poets wrote on, but torn to shreds and thrown into the swallowing sea. “Well, I’ve seen it, Will, and you can’t hide shit from _me_.”

            Will broke free again. “Fuck you, Kit! I’m not hiding! I—”

            “Of course you are! You’re hiding everything from everyone, just like you always have. You—”

            “I’m not _hiding!_ ” And what a lie that was. “I’m not running. I—”

            “Then what about Alice?” It was a cruel trick, to bring Alice into this, as if he and they were the same. Will had _loved_ Alice. It was different. Kit knew it was different, but it didn’t matter. “You ran when shit got too real and pushed her away. You’re always running from Anne, but guess what, you don’t get to do that with _me_. You can’t push _me_ aside, Shakespeare. You can’t push me aside because you’re too scared to let me in, you coward!”

            Kit was sobbing. There were no tears, but his chest ached and his breath came fast and fierce with it. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t do this, couldn’t sustain this burning anger when there was nothing left of him to feed the flames. He wanted it to stop, wanted to close the box and keep that tiny thing called hope inside. _Don’t push me aside. Don’t leave me, Will. I’m so cold. Don’t leave me cold like this._

But he couldn’t say that. Those words would not come, and Will couldn’t read them on his face.

            “I pushed Alice away?” Will’s voice had changed. Kit had heard a thousand things in that voice before, but never cruelty. Never until now. “Look who’s fucking talking, Kit. You don’t get to shit on everyone else’s lives just because your boyfriend dumped you.”

            “Don’t—” _No_. Not that. Kit knew it was his own fault, knew he’d let them all think what they would about where Emerson went, but he didn’t care. Will wasn’t allowed to touch _that_.

            But William Shakespeare didn’t care for rules. “Oh poor, little Kit Marlowe got his heart broken, so now he’s gone off the fucking rails, and it’s everybody else’s problem but his! Grow the fuck up, Kit. Grow the fuck up and be serious. You got dumped. Get over it!”

            _Get over it_. No. _Get over it, get over it, get over it._ He couldn’t. He hadn’t shut the box in time. Hope was gone and Pandora—all-giving, first woman, she whose name had come to mean ruin—lay weeping on the floor, betrayed by her gods and her own nature.

            He shook his head, and then he ran.

            Will’s neighbors must have heard the door slam, must have borne some tiny witness to the ending of Kit’s world.

            It didn’t matter.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really very sorry. Ophelia's gonna kick my ass for this.


End file.
